Oh, wow, oh, oh, whoa, oh, wow.

Oh, wow.

Oh, wow. Hello, you're listening to The Science of Everything podcast, episode 160.

The Evolution of Animals.

I'm your host, James Fodor.

In this episode, we're going to discuss the evolutionary origins and development proliferation of animals.

So we're going to start at the very beginning with the split of animals from other types of initially

single cellular life forms and then talk about the different key traits that have evolved

over time in order to that are necessary for increasing the complexity and of life of animal

life and expanding into new niches and new environments.

So in particular, we're going to be talking about the development of bilateral symmetry,

the complete gut, the sealum, which is an internal body cavity, the backbone, which is common to chordates,

going to talk about the evolution

of jaws, moving from jawless to jawed fish. We're then going to conclude by talking about

how vertebrates moved on to land with the evolution of tetrapods, and then gradually developed

more and more adaptations for land with the evolution of amniotes.

Recommended pre-listening for this episode is episode 157, the geologic time scale, which will give you some historical context to fit in the different evolutionary stages that we're

going to be talking about.

And also, episode 69 and 70 on animal diversity

would also be useful because that will provide a context for different types of extant organisms,

animal life that exist today, whereas in this episode we're going to be focusing mostly on extinct

form. So all that being said, let's make a start and we'll begin with

...